Founder and Editor of The Lanchester Review. Previous or occasional contributor to Telegraph Blogs, Comment is Free, The First Post/The Week, Harry's Place, New Directions, The Brussels Journal, The London Progressive Journal, Labour Uncut, The American Conservative and Russia Today (RT). Available for work via davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, all lower case.

Sunday, 17 February 2013

The Rape of Justice

Can anyone explain to me how the conviction rate for rape is
demonstrably wrong? What, exactly, would be the correct rate? And why,
exactly?

That a woman has had a most unpleasant
experience of this kind, the far greater likelihood of which is a direct
consequence of the unquestionable Sexual Revolution, does not
necessarily mean that she has experienced the offence of rape as the law
defines it. Either that, or the real scandal is that there are so few
prosecutions for what is clearly very widespread perjury, attempting to
pervert the course of justice, and making false statements to the
police. Not that those two possibilities are mutually exclusive.

Far
from abrogating in any way the principle of corroboration in Scots Law,
that principle needs instead to be extended throughout the United
Kingdom. Just as there must be no reversal of the burden of proof or
abolition of the right to conduct one’s own defence in rape cases,
changes frequently demanded by certain campaigners, so there must be no
extension of anonymity to adult defendants. Rather, there should be no
anonymity for adult accusers, either. We either have an open system of
justice, or we do not.

The specific offence of rape
only serves to keep on the streets people who should certainly be taken
out of circulation. Instead, we need to replace the offences of rape,
serious sexual assault and indecent assault with an aggravating
circumstance to the ordinary categories of assault, enabling the
maximum, and therefore also the minimum, sentences to be doubled, since
every offence should carry a minimum sentence of one third of its
maximum sentence, or 15 years for life.

That way, those
poor women with broken bones and worse, whose assailants were never
convicted of anything, really would have received justice.

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Founder, Proprietor, Publisher and Editor of The Lanchester Review since 2013. Founder, Proprietor (for now), Publisher (for now) and Editor-in-Chief of Lanchester Books since 2014. Charity volunteer and administrator since 1994. Freelance journalist since 1996. Supply teacher and market research worker from 2002 until prevented by disability. Member of the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham since 2006. Preventing the University of Durham’s undergraduates’ degrees from getting the way of their education since 2000.
Elected Parish Councillor from the age of 21 until I stood down voluntarily in 2013. During that time, Lanchester was among the first in the country to secure power of wellbeing, power of general competence, and Quality Parish Council Status.
At 21, I began eight years as a governor of a primary school which, at the time of my appointment, still had the same Headteacher as when I had been a pupil there. Three weeks short of 22, I found myself in the same position when I began eight years as a governor of a comprehensive school.
Since May 2013, a member of the Community Panel advising Durham’s Police and Crime Commissioner.